Open letter to the prime minister through her and 10DS twitter accounts25 January 2017

Dear Mrs May

Re: ‘anti-hate crime’ industry, like the race relations industry some 25 years ago

We write to you because the subject of our concern in embedded in the period when you were the home secretary, and also because now you are in more powerful position as the prime minister.
We appreciate any meaningful initiatives to improve the quality of life of the groups of people who are subjected to racism, harassment, abuse, hate and so on because of who they are.
However, in the interest of the best use of the public money, we are of the view that dealing with these abusive situations without addressing why things are as they are is not just distorted logic but sheer hypocrisy.
The extent of the link between the lies, fear to promote Bexit campaign and increased racism/ race hate crimes is becoming clear as confirmed by the report of the Independent newspaper that was given exclusive access to a database of more than 500 racist incidents compiled in the weeks since the EU referendum – most victims were Eastern European or Muslims.
But we are not aware of any obvious measures to tackle the recent upsurge of far right, far right media and politicians, significant sources for radicalising far right extremism, resulting in inevitable rise in random race/ religion hate crimes.
However, we are aware that the home office has allocated undisclosed amount of extra money to the undisclosed groups to ‘tackle’ hate crime in this financial year without any specified success criteria.

{The following FoI request to the home office (case ref 41999) has yet to be responded, despite exhausting all FoI procedures – it could be that the home office has something to hide:(a) How much money had been allocated to tackle hate crime in this financial year? (b) How much extra money had been allocated to tackle hate crime in this financial year? (c) How much money re (b) above has been given out in this financial year? (d) How many community organisations have been given money to tackle hate crimes (e) list of the community organisations who have been allocated/ given this money and the amount in each case?}

We understand that some undisclosed groups who claim to monitor ‘hate-crime’/ Islamophobia are enjoying such funding without really addressing why such crimes and thus rendering inadequate value for public money.
It looks that the groups dealing with the hate crimes i.e. ‘effects’ are actually interested in a type of hate crimes affecting certain people which need not addressing ‘why’ as they are not the subject of the ongoing negativity pasted by right-wing media headlines/ politicians or hit by ‘immigration’ like synonymous. But for those who remain in the media headlines in one negative way or the other, like Muslims, incidents of active Islamophobia and harassment remain daily experiences for them and to tackle this essentially needs to address ‘why’. Such a divisive approach is totally unacceptable under home office funding.
Moreover, the self-appointed monitoring groups, begging* for people to report ‘hate-crime’ incidents to them, are hardly effective in achieving any positive outcome of the crime reported to them which leaves behind a very frustrated victim due to no arrests or prosecutions - only few cases are taken up by the Crown Prosecution Service because of the lack of clear and substantial evidence. These crimes are very difficult to prosecute because of the high burden prosecutors face when proving that the defendant’s bias indeed motivated the crime. *(Such is the level of ignorance about the community needs, that a group heavily publicises its existence on the twitter, most probably to fulfil grant criteria – those using twitter are knowledgeable people and can look after themselves well, it is the most vulnerable who don’t come near twitter that really need support)
Looking at the outcome, most of the groups funded by the home office to monitor ‘hate crime’ appear to provide no more than lip talk and cosmetic treatment to the victims of the ‘hate crime’.
We have heard justification from some groups that by recording incidences of abuse can help advise you and the government where ‘public money is most effective’ - a rather interesting claim given that the police and CPS have thorough data base of crimes and professionally inform the government policy-making as well as its crime-related financial decisions.
It was the police who reported that hate crime rose by 57 per cent in the four days following the EU referendum, and that 42 per cent more hate crime was reported in the last two weeks of June 2016 than there had been in the corresponding period of 2015.
We look forward to hearing from you how you are going to address the conflicts and contradictions that we have pointed out.

Note: Since publishing our letter, a collusive ‘hate-crime’ monitoring group has blocked us on tweeter - this is what the government handouts do!
We are beginning to believe that these so called monitoring groups are seemingly placed to damp down any negative feelings of the ‘hate-crime’ victims against the authorities.

The HCJ is not under the influence of any political party nor it is in the business of promoting councillors or other elected representatives but it shares its analysis of socio-political and economic situations with voters to help them to make well informed democratic choices.